The Home Guard was formed on 14 May 1940 as Local Defence Volunteers, a secondary force to assist the regular army in defending Britain in the event of an invasion by Germany during the Second World War. It was comprised of men who were too old or too young to join the armed forces, plus those men who were of fighting age but were employed in reserved occupations doing essential war work on the Home Front. These volunteers trained and took on guard duties at night or at the weekend, after doing their normal day jobs. In this wartime cartoon a typical platoon of ‘Dad’s Army’ is portrayed in training in the local countryside, coming into contact with a full-time working land girl of the Women’s Land Army.

Source: The cartoon originally appeared in Punch magazine and then in the wartime cartoon anthology Laughs around the Land. Courtesy of Stuart Antrobus